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- Written by: NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
In the quest for habitable planets beyond our own, NASA is studying a mission concept called Pandora, which could eventually help decode the atmospheric mysteries of distant worlds in our galaxy.
One of four low-cost astrophysics missions selected for further concept development under NASA’s new Pioneers program, Pandora would study approximately 20 stars and exoplanets – planets outside of our solar system – to provide precise measurements of exoplanetary atmospheres.
This mission would seek to determine atmospheric compositions by observing planets and their host stars simultaneously in visible and infrared light over long periods. Most notably, Pandora would examine how variations in a host star’s light impacts exoplanet measurements. This remains a substantial problem in identifying the atmospheric makeup of planets orbiting stars covered in starspots, which can cause brightness variations as a star rotates.
Pandora is a small satellite mission known as a SmallSat, one of three such orbital missions receiving the green light from NASA to move into the next phase of development in the Pioneers program. SmallSats are low-cost spaceflight missions that enable the agency to advance scientific exploration and increase access to space.
Pandora would operate in Sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit, which always keeps the Sun directly behind the satellite. This orbit minimizes light changes on the satellite and allows Pandora to obtain data over extended periods. Of the SmallSat concepts selected for further study, Pandora is the only one focused on exoplanets.
“Exoplanetary science is moving from an era of planet discovery to an era of atmospheric characterization,” said Elisa Quintana, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the principal investigator for Pandora. “Pandora is focused on trying to understand how stellar activity affects our measurements of exoplanet atmospheres, which will lay the groundwork for future exoplanet missions aiming to find planets with Earth-like atmospheres.”
Maximizing the scientific potential
Pandora concentrates on studying exoplanetary and stellar atmospheres by surveying planets as they cross in front of – or transit – their host stars.
To accomplish this, Pandora would take advantage of a proven technique called transit spectroscopy, which involves measuring the amount of starlight filtering through a planet’s atmosphere, and splitting it into bands of color known as a spectrum.
These colors encode information that helps scientists identify gases present in the planet’s atmosphere, and can help determine if a planet is rocky with a thin atmosphere like Earth or if it has a thick gas envelope like Neptune.
This mission, however, would take transit spectroscopy a step further. Pandora is designed to mitigate one of the technique’s most crucial setbacks: stellar contamination.
“Stars have atmospheres and changing surface features like spots that affect our measurements,” said Jessie Christiansen, the deputy science lead at the NASA Exoplanet Archive at Caltech in Pasadena, California, and a co-investigator for Pandora. “To be sure we’re really observing an exoplanet’s atmosphere, we need to untangle the planet’s variations from those of the star.”
Pandora would separate stellar and exoplanetary signals by observing them simultaneously in infrared and visible light. Stellar contamination is easier to detect at the shorter wavelengths of visible light, and so obtaining atmospheric data through both infrared and visible light would allow scientists to better differentiate observations coming from exoplanet atmospheres and stars.
“Stellar contamination is a sticking point that complicates precise observations of exoplanets,” said Benjamin Rackham, a 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and a co-investigator for Pandora. “Pandora would help build the necessary tools for disentangling stellar and planetary signals, allowing us to better study the properties of both starspots and exoplanetary atmospheres.”
Synergy in space
Joining forces with NASA’s larger missions, Pandora would operate concurrently with the James Webb Space Telescope, slated for launch later this year. Webb will provide the ability to study the atmospheres of exoplanets as small as Earth with unprecedented precision, and Pandora would seek to expand the telescope’s research and findings by observing the host stars of previously identified planets over longer periods.
Missions such as NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), Hubble Space Telescope, and the retired Kepler and Spitzer spacecraft have given scientists astonishing glimpses at these distant worlds, and laid a strong foundation in exoplanetary knowledge. These missions, however, have yet to fully address the stellar contamination problem, the magnitude of which is uncertain in previous studies of exoplanetary atmospheres. Pandora seeks to fill these critical gaps in NASA’s understanding of planetary atmospheres and increase the capabilities in exoplanet research.
“Pandora is the right mission at the right time because thousands of exoplanets have already been discovered, and we are aware of many that are amenable to atmospheric characterization that orbit small active stars,” said Jessie Dotson, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and the deputy principal investigator for Pandora. “The next frontier is to understand the atmospheres of these planets, and Pandora would play a key role in uncovering how stellar activity impacts our ability to characterize atmospheres. It would be a great complement to Webb’s mission.”
A launch pad for exploration
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, or LLNL, in Livermore, California, is co-leading the Pandora mission with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
LLNL will manage the mission and leverage capabilities developed for other government agencies, including a low-cost approach to the telescope design and fabrication that enables this groundbreaking exoplanet science from a SmallSat platform.
NASA’s Pioneers program, which consists of SmallSats, payloads attached to the International Space Station, and scientific balloon experiments, fosters innovative space and suborbital experiments for early-to-mid-career researchers through low-cost, small hardware missions. Under this new program, Pandora would operate on a five-year timeline with a budget cap of $20 million.
Despite tight constraints, the Pioneers program enables Pandora to concentrate on a focused research question while engaging a diverse team of students and early career scientists from more than a dozen of universities and research institutes. This SmallSat platform creates an excellent blueprint for small-scale missions to make an impact in the astrophysics community.
“Pandora’s long-duration observations in visible and infrared light are unique and well-suited for SmallSats,” said Quintana. “We are excited that Pandora will play a crucial role in NASA’s quest for finding other worlds that could potentially be habitable.”
For more information about the Pioneers program, visit https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/programs/astrophysics-pioneers.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – One of Lake County’s members of Congress hosted local and regional leaders on Thursday in a discussion to update community members on the rollout of the American Rescue Plan.
Congressman Mike Thompson said during the online panel discussion that help is on the way for Americans thanks to the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus legislation, signed into law earlier this month by President Joe Biden.
In addition to $1,400 stimulus checks, the American Rescue Plan extends unemployment, subsidizes COBRA health insurance and extends the child tax credit, which Thompson said economists are reporting will cut childhood poverty in half.
The bill also will put children safely back in school, with $130 billion to fund school reopenings and help children regain lost learning.
He said it also will help ensure essential workers such as first responders, teachers and health care providers stay on the job.
A key priority in the bill is the vaccine rollout, according to Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace, who joined Thompson in the virtual meeting.
Pace said the bill gives a lot of hope that the community can finally move on to a life that’s not controlled by fear of the virus.
He said the vaccine distribution and rollout in California is the most exciting and impactful part of the bill, noting that for many months it’s been an “all hands on deck” approach with all staffing and resources going to vaccinations.
In Lake County, more than a third of all people age 16 and older have been vaccinated, with two-thirds of those age 75 and older receiving the vaccine, Pace said.
He said all residents of the county’s skilled nursing facilities are now vaccinated. Those facilities give an example of what the future can look like.
“Those places were a disaster in the fall,” he said, explaining that they were locked down and people were dying.
However, with residents now vaccinated, they are accepting visitors and it’s starting to look like normal life, with no new cases reported, he said.
Pace said the more people are vaccinated, the more we can get back to normal, with less suffering.
He said the funding will help get out the vaccines and also will help with communications, including educating people to address vaccine hesitancy.
“I believe we’re through the worst of the pandemic but it’s not over,” said Pace, adding that the vaccine is the best tool to address the coronavirus.
Critical help for local governments
Besides offering help to individuals, the American Rescue Plan is providing financial assistance to counties, cities and school districts.
The county of Lake is expected to receive $12.4 million, the city of Lakeport just over $900,000 and the city of Clearlake approximately $2,873,678, officials reported.
Local school districts are anticipated to receive the following amounts: Kelseyville Unified, $5,054,000; Konocti Unified School District, $13,835,000; Lakeport Unified School District, $3,239,000; Lucerne Elementary School District, $944,000; Middletown Unified School District, $2,454,000; and Upper Lake Unified School District, $2,848,000.
Officials on Thompson’s panel said the funding is supposed to arrive for local governments in two payments, with 50 percent expected to be disbursed by May 10.
Napa Mayor Scott Sedgley said the bill is great news for small cities like his.
“It’s going to make all the difference in the world,” he said, explaining they had to cut back on services.
Sedgley said cities are seeking to get payments directly from the federal government and not funneled through the state, an effort on which he said Thompson is working.
Separately, Lake County News checked in with Clearlake City Manager Alan Flora about the funds the city expects to receive.
“There has been little detailed information at this point. We are all still waiting on Treasury guidance,” Flora said Thursday.
“As we currently understand, the feds have 60 days from bill signing to pass the funds to the state and the state has 30 days to pass the funds to us,” he said.
That is consistent with the timeline given during the Thursday press conference, with Flora confirming the funds are to come in two payments.
Flora said the main categories for spending the $2,873,678 the city is set to receive include providing government services affected by revenue loss, providing premium pay to essential employees, addressing economic impacts through aid to households and small businesses, or investments in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure.
“This is pretty much all we know at this point,” Flora said. “We believe the biggest long term impact with this ‘one-time funding’ is likely best invested in local infrastructure, but we will need to see the actual guidance when it is released to determine for sure.”
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A Novato woman will return to court in April for further proceedings as she faces prosecution for a crash that killed two Clearlake residents earlier this month.
Keilah Marie Coyle, 21, was in court on Tuesday for her second court appearance, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff.
On the night of March 13, authorities said Coyle was driving drunk in a 2003 Ford F-250 pickup on Highway 29 north of Middletown when she crossed the double-yellow lines and collided head-on with a 2000 GMC van driven by Cassandra Elaine Rolicheck, 53.
Rolicheck and her passenger, 47-year-old Miguel Maciel Dominguez, were declared dead at the scene, officials said.
Hours earlier, Coyle was involved in a noninjury hit-and-run crash in Sonoma County, which authorities are continuing to investigate.
Hinchcliff has charged Coyle with eight felony charges – two counts each of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, negligent vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, gross vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence causing injury. – and special allegations of causing great bodily injury to both victims and an enhancement that would give additional prison time on conviction for causing death to more than one person.
Hinchcliff said Coyle has hired Tim Hodson, an attorney from Sacramento, to represent her.
She will return to court on April 13 for the next hearing, which will include bail review, Hinchcliff said.
Until then, Coyle’s bail is still $2 million and she remains in custody at the Lake County Jail, jail records showed.
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Hodson is from Fairfield.
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
The 2020 wildfire season burned more than 4.2 million acres, making it by far the largest in the history of California.
Eight out of the 10 largest wildfires in California history have occurred in the past 10 years, including the August Complex fire, which burned more than one million acres in the fall of 2020, making it the state’s first “gigafire” – a term for a fire that burns at least one million acres of land.
And in each of these major fires, tens of thousands of Californians ran for their lives, sometimes in the dark of night with just the clothes on their back, scrambling to find any way to escape the roaring flames.
McGuire’s office said the way the state strategically grows its communities has also come into question as the reality of mega fires has set in here in the Golden State.
Development practices in very high fire risk areas must change. If they don’t, more death and destruction will follow, McGuire’s office said.
In fact, the California Attorney General’s Office has already intervened with lawsuits on three development projects in the wildland urban interface because of their wildfire impacts.
“Over the last six years, we have all seen too much destruction and pain caused by this era of mega fires. Wildfires have clearly become a risk to the long-term livelihoods of millions of Californians. We must change the way we build in high fire risk zones, and if certain common sense health and safety requirements can’t be met, we shouldn’t be building at all. The new normal in California is here, and that is why we need SB 12,” Sen. McGuire said.
SB 12 sets up a transformational process for the State Fire Marshal to establish new standards that ensure developments as a whole are designed to withstand wildfire, not just the buildings within those developments.
This legislation states that if developments can’t meet these standards, locals can’t approve them.
And, crucially, these standards are tiered so that the standards get increasingly stronger as developments get larger. Larger developments put more people in the wildland urban interface and so they must meet higher standards than smaller developments.
As of 2010, California had 4.5 million homes in the wildland urban interface; two million of those are at high or extreme risk from wildfire, according to a 2018 analysis by Verisk, a data analytics firm.
Half of the buildings lost over the last decade in wildfires were in the WUI, built under current fire code standards.
McGuire’s office said SB 12 presents a comprehensive approach to ensuring data driven, fire-safe development. This would include providing enhanced ingress and egress routes (mandating primary and secondary access roads) along with mandated public safety vehicle access.
Mandated funding mechanisms for defensible space maintenance and vegetation management is embedded in this legislation along with mandated wildland fire hazard mitigation planning, among other critical policy items.
SB 12 is supported by the American Planning Association California Chapter, California Fire Chiefs and Fire Districts and the Sonoma Land Trust.